Since I moved out of the United States, I stopped following US politics (or at least as close as I did when living in Maine). Most of the news that I get at the moment come as responses from my friends and acquaintances in social media. "This week's gone viral" are these images from a see-saw built in the border US-Mexico between El Paso, Texas; and ciudad de Juarez, Mexico.
The initiative looks to me incredibly symbolic. On the one hand, it provides those families split apart by the wall; broken up by political boundaries, a possibility to do something physical together. On the other hand, is subversive as its purpose defeats that of the wall itself. Some folks I have talked to about this issue tend to refer to the wall as Donald Trump project, but I think is important to realize that this wall has been long before Trump took the wheel of the country, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Bush, all authorized the expansion of the wall. Americans for a while have been trying to establish a physical boundary to separate Mexico from their beloved land (obviously stolen from native communities, but that's an issue in and of itself).
Why this is terrifying to me? The rhetoric that exists about division currently in the world is creating a lot of tension, and because of the cultural empire the United States has created in the world, a lot of developing countries look up to it. History tells us also that fascism is as contagious as a flu; from Germany it travelled to South Africa and created Apartheid (for instance). It is only a matter of time for the United States president's rampant fascism to infect the world...as a matter of fact, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil is already virulent, Sebastián Piñera in Chile is also, to a certain degree. On this issue I would like to bring up another piece of discourse that I find fascinating and terrifying: American concentration camps. An article in the New Yorker (source below) discussed Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez' use of the term concentration camp to refer to the migrant detention centers in the south of the US.
Jose Luis Gonzalez; Reuters.
Inhumane conditions, no possibility for trial, imprisoned for the sole fact of existing where they exist with no documentation. Their existence in the US is ilegal, yet they profit of them. The antithesis and rhetoric that exists around migrants is terrifying. What is going to happen when Climate Change really displaces millions of people across the world. Will we reinforce our walls and safe-houses? The United States and Europe have a massive debt to pay to the world for the damage they have caused yet they throw the rocks and hide the hand. This is a key moment in the history of the US for Americans to stand up for what's right. To show they actually believe in Human Rights, for those who condemn trump for his infamous speeches - lock her up; grab her by the pussy; the dozens of executive orders against the country's constitution. But will they?
I spent the entire month of May living in Berlin, where a wall was also erected to divide and control people.
Different parts of the walls in the city are today used for different purposes. Some are historical monuments, some are museums, some are living land for alternative communities, some were gifted, and some are protecting buildings were young folks rave it out. All of the uses for the Berlin Wall coincide in one point: they all warn us about the dangers of intentionally dividing others.
Even Ronald Reagan called Gorbachev to "open the gate"; to "tear down the wall". Why is Donald Trump continuously trying to close it?
If we do not work collaborative across the globe, we will fall under the claws of this monster we've created: Climate Change (which by the way, the US, EU, India and China have been at the forefront of creating). #justsaying
Let's think migration again and start all over? We need new definitions.